But what were the reactions of similar tribes to the first vapourtrails in the sky? To something unprecedented in their cosmology or folklore. Panic? Anticipation?Surely there must still be people alive who remember the occurence in their communities. Or anthropologists who were told what those first experiences meant.

5/22/2008

Another nutty professor claims that income is an indicator of intelligence. The working class are irredemiably, genetically stupid he says, and therefore should be discouraged from taking up university space better exploited by those more gifted by Nature - the well-off middle classes. The working class are simply gentically inferior and should get used to it.Black people are disporportionately represented in the working class, so the good Doctor is also saying that they are genetically inferior too. That race is an indicator of intelligence, and that the superior races should be allowed to fulfill their genetic destiny and rule the earth. That the poor and racially inferior should leave the higher functions of society, requiring intellectual ability as measured by the infallible IQ method, to the white middle class descendants of Rhodes, Voerwerd and Jeffrey Archer.Maybe some intelligent hack at the Mail would like to phone up Dr Charlton and ask him to explain the inherent racism of his crackpot theory. Now that would be a true indicator of intelligence among the superior white middle classes at The Mail.

Or very nearly. The panel of respected cosmologists were repeating, almost word for word, Og's explanation to Kevin of the origins of the Universe, and the advantages to the average chancer of possessing a map of the holes in it. And more than that, within a few minutes of each other in the fabric of the TV continuum. What are the chances of that? At least they're better than our chances of actually meeting or contacting anyone from another galaxy, if the gathering at Patrick Moore's place were to be believed.
According to them, it's a bit of a mistake that we are here at all. And the time we've got left to even see any of the rest of the universe is so tiny, we might as well get used to the fact that we are going to just have to get along with our own species, and that no slender strangers from space are ever going to rescue us from ourselves.
And just as importantly, by depicting a universe which is far from orderly or perfect, it casts even more doubt (if any more were needed) that the universe was not designed by anyone or anything. No Supreme Being could have made such a bodge job of it.